Welcome

Shuttle-Mir Illustrated History
Book - Foreword

One of the many parts of the Shuttle-Mir story that continues to amaze me is
the perseverance and undying dedication of those who actually made it happen,
especially despite the adversities that arose, seemingly at every turn. These
came from internal critics and external doubters, and from the technical challenges,
including fire, depressurization, and even "floods" of condensing liquids inside
the station.

The dedicated team members included the U.S. and Russian space crews who lived
and trained far from home; the U.S. and Russian Flight Surgeons who learned
every nuance of each other's flight program and medical system, and who gained
fluency in each other's language in a few months; the engineers and specialists
who lived and worked away from friends and families for months, and who made
sense of totally new situations and systems; and the payload experts who worked
tirelessly in trying physical conditions, and who integrated the U.S. hardware
into Russian space modules and still maintained safety. These are the same caliber
of people who put Gagarin into space, who put men on the Moon, who kept the
Mir flying beyond its predicted service life, and who brought the Shuttle to
a level of capability, reliability, and predictability that as a total package
surpasses any launch vehicle in the world. These are people I would trust with
my life, and indeed I will do so in the very near future as I begin my deployment
onboard the International Space Station (ISS) with my Russian crewmates.

An interesting irony of our continuing partnership with the Russians is that,
on the Russian side, the ISS team is virtually the same one that executed Phase
1, as it did many earlier phases of the Soviet and Russian space programs. On
the U.S. side, although some Shuttle-Mir veterans are now working other details
of the current ISS Program, these people are only a few amongst the dozens of
U.S. team members who were not here for Phase 1, or who were so immersed in
the separate Space Shuttle and Station Programs that Phase 1 is now barely a
memory. To some of them, Shuttle-Mir may be barely a factor in the necessary
change from short-duration "Space Shuttle thinking" to long-duration "space
station thinking." It may bring sadness to some, but this much is true: We will
never do things the "old way" again.

Of course, the current ISS team members will write their own story. They will
also achieve great things as they overcome many of the same adversities that
faced Phase 1. Meanwhile, they will build an incredible piece of hardware in
space, using pieces from all over the globe.

But there will never be the same groundbreaking, the same pathfinding, the
same cultural breakthroughs that we saw in Phase 1. It had its high points and
low points, its high drama and political circus, but on the whole it must be
seen as a success achieved by humans of diverse technical and cultural backgrounds,
performing on a very public stage.

With the world and the politicians constantly looking over their shoulders,
men and women worked through their problems face-to-face, building trust in
each other and in each other's goals. This was often done at very personal levels
and with high stakes, both physical and emotional, to achieve exactly what the
participants set out to do and more: to execute a joint program of scientific
achievement and space exploration by partners who had been archenemies less
than ten years before. During Phase 1, Russians worked side by side with U.S.
specialists at NASA facilities, and Americans lived not only on the Mir space
station but also on a formerly secret military base. More importantly, they
solved, successfully and safely, every problem they faced together. Learning
to solve problems jointly is the skill we must not lose, or we will have to
start over.

Shuttle-Mir was a unique challenge at a unique time in history. It may not
be fully appreciated for quite a while, possibly not until after we finish the
highest risk portions of the ISS and we have time to reflect on what made this
all possible, and perhaps not until after we have sorted out some of the relational
growing pains we still see in the new operational relationship. The most important
message in the story presented here, however, is the story of the people, from
the highly visible ones to the ones hidden behind their stacks of documents
and boxes of experiment hardware. It is a story of cultural and linguistic misunderstandings
as well as technical "mind-melds" and operational tugs-of-war.

Phase 1—Shuttle-Mir succeeded for three reasons. First, it succeeded because
we had the unwavering support and guidance of key leaders such as George Abbey,
Dan Goldin, and Yuri Koptev despite the most intense political pressure from
outside the two space agencies. Second, it succeeded because we had the initial
program structure, set up by Tommy Holloway, Valery Ryumin, Jim Nise, and others,
which worked superbly. And finally, it succeeded because the Russians and Americans
always found a way to meet each other, sometimes halfway, sometimes on totally
different paths, but always striving to find that common place, always trying
to learn and to teach at the same time.

We still have so much to learn and so much to teach each other, and we must
now include the rest of the world in our story. The story of international space
exploration only begins in low Earth orbit. It should end in the stars.